


The Edge of Madness

by stpatrick1982



Category: Cyberpunk & Cyberpunk 2020 (Roleplaying Games), Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Cyberpunk, Gen, Pulp Science Fiction, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stpatrick1982/pseuds/stpatrick1982
Summary: Night City 2045. Charlie "Blitz" Bentley is a Militech veteran getting by as a leg-breaker. Ace "Lorem" Levitsky is a freelance netrunner who takes only small-time jobs through the Danger Girl investigations firm. Their paths cross with Winter Rae, an ex-corpo with info about a hot new Street drug. They uncover a conspiracy involving megacorporations and organized crime.Note: This story takes place in the setting presented in the TRPG Cyberpunk RED. This places it after Cyberpunk 2020 but before the events of Cyberpunk 2077. Night City is an independent city-state in what used to be California. It is recovering after the end of the Fourth Corporate War, which saw a bomb detonated at Arasaka Tower. It's not as developed as in 2077. That's all you need to know.
Kudos: 1





	The Edge of Madness

**BLITZ**

Kids these days…

My old man used to complain about my generation every chance he got. It seems like every generation complains about the next one. They say they’re more disrespectful, too soft, too spoiled. The reality is that middle-aged people have had their souls crushed by the daily grind, forced to conform, so they become resentful old curmudgeons, shaking their wrinkled fists at the youth they secretly envy. I always told myself growing up that I wouldn’t be like that. I wouldn’t become another grumpy shriveled cliché.

But, man, kids these days…

Anna Ng is lucky, as kids in Night City have it, anyway. Her parents live in Kabuki, an enclave for East Asian migrants in the Watson Development. The district is full of towering steel skeletons flanked by enormous cranes, vast hordes of construction mechanoids scurrying below like industrious insects. Anna lives in one of the recently completed arcologies built for the refugees left unhoused during the War. Her father, a low-tier corporate drone, sends her to a fairly decent private school where the textbooks are only slightly older than the teachers. Anna has it pretty good. Better than I did.

That’s not enough for Anna, though. A pretty little thing, she went and got herself a boyfriend, a real piece of work. He’s not legit enough for any of the real gangs, but he puts on a show. He has the look, the style, even some cyberware, but on The Street, he’s a nobody. All that matters to Anna is that he likes her, drives a nice car, and has drugs.

Ever since the Feds bio-engineered botanical diseases to destroy most of the world’s coca, cannabis, and opium plants in the 1990s, getting high has become a scientific endeavor. The benign stuff you can get over the counter with a hefty mark-up, or you can try your luck on the grey market, get something imported for cheaper. You want a rush of euphoria, though, you have to find it on The Street, where you have to pay a dealer. Anna doesn’t have any money, but she still pays. When she gets old enough, if she wants, she can choose that lifestyle. But, right now, she’s just 13.

Anna’s boyfriend lives in a cargo container on the edge of Watson. It’s more spacious than my studio apartment, with enough room for a refrigerator, a desk, a bed. I lean against one of the container’s bright orange corrugated walls and eat my burrito. I wait a few hours for Anna to exit the container, hail a ride in a groundcar, and leave. The neighborhood is teeming with people, extended families crammed into containers, a mess of flesh and sweat folded on itself. I’m not too conspicuous. I wait until the car vanishes and then walk up to the boyfriend’s door. I knock and wait for a reply.

“Who is it?”

“Special delivery.”

The boyfriend opens the door and I deliver a fist to his nose. He crumples to the floor, curls up at my boots. He looks up at me, nose crooked, angry, confused, scared.

“Hello, lover boy.”

He scrambles away from me, but all he succeeds in doing is clawing up the rug, getting tangled in it. I reach down and grab him by the ankles, pull him closer to me. He lets out an indecipherable whine as I step slowly over his head. I place the bottom of my boot against the back of his head, the crusty tread imprinting itself on his pasty skull.

“Listen: stay away from little girls.”

I give the creep’s head a gentle kick, then move the foot, put my weight on it. With the other I raise my knee and then bring the heel down on the creep’s wrist, fracturing the radius bone. There’s a satisfying crunch, like stepping on gravel. A scream bursts from his mouth. I kneel and clasp my hand over the lower part of his face.

“Don’t make me come back here.”

I wait for him to nod. I can see from the look in his eyes I won’t be back. 

I stand, survey the container, and spot a small pink moon-shaped device on a table. An inhaler. Known on The Street as Luster. It goes in through the lungs, produces extended feelings of exhilaration, lowers inhibitions. Popular among the club scene, it’s supposed to enhance dancing and sex. I can’t remember the last time I did either.

Before I depart, I kick the prone creep hard in the ribs, aiming for the kidney. Anna probably thinks she’s in love, poor kid. I was young once. Even thought I was in love at one time, too. Eventually reality robs romance of its bright sparkle and you realize there’s no Prince Charming cosmically assigned to find you, just a lot of creeps.

Night City didn’t make me cynical. The War did that. I signed up with Militech thinking I wasn’t just joining a corporate army but a family that would take care of me, even after my service ended. All they asked was they turn me into a chromed-out killing machine tripped out on combat stims. When the War ended, Militech cut me loose and forgot about me. Left with nothing but broken promises, I settled here, thinking that northern California would be nice as anywhere. I made a sincere effort at an honest living, but it didn’t take. Some people don’t play well with others. I’m one of them.

I don’t have a title, but if some creep is bothering your teenage daughter, some deadbeat won’t make good on a debt, or if you just want someone to leave you alone, there’s a good chance I’ll get a call. I spend a lot of time in roach-infested flophouses, seeing the real cesspool in one of the scummiest cities on Earth. Still, I’m my own boss, I set my own hours, and I make a decent living. Besides, what else am I going to do with all this chrome they gave me? I could fight on the independent circuit and retire in ten years with a brain like porridge, or I could become an edge-runner, do dirty work for people with particular problems. I have a limited skill set and, like it or not, it revolves around hurting people. Most of the time, the people I’m hurting deserve it, too.

I pop open the door to my ride and slide in, the leather seat audibly sagging against my body. Even for an average sized person the Galena is a tight fit. I use my agent to call Pollen. A few chimes and her portrait fills the screen, grinning. A blonde bony middle-aged woman dressed in black. Her face is all right angles: pointed nose, strong jaw, high cheeks. When she smiles the edges get sharper. It makes me nervous. 

“Job’s done,” I say, starting the car. “That was easy. What else you got?”

“You’re efficient,” Pollen says. “I got a client who wants to meet you personally.”

I sigh. “My rep should speak for itself.”

“Some people still require an individualized touch.”

I shake my head, grit my teeth, force out a “Fine.”

“Sending you the location.”

The address is an apartment in north Heywood, an area loaded with generic mass-produced multi-dwelling units. All the major franchises have set up shop, their doors fringed by self-contained vending machines dispensing everything from ramen noodles to surgical masks to live rhinoceros beetles. There are just as many people here as where I came from, but this time I do look conspicuous because the people here are decidedly more affluent and more light-skinned. Most of the cyberware is focused more on fashion than application. Not many veterans here. I feel eyes on me as I walk into the lobby, call the elevator, and make my way up to the 18th floor. The hall is empty.

I have a bad feeling about this. I’m reminded of the time my unit walked into an ambush in the Sacramento Valley based on deceptive intel about an unguarded Arasaka supply depot. I was one of the survivors lucky to escape, albeit minus a leg. Once you’ve endured one traumatic event, you become sensitive about walking into potential ones. I’ve been through several traumatic events so, yeah, I’m pretty damn paranoid. Being paranoid has saved my hide more than a couple times, though, so I trust my gut.

I knock on the door with my meat hand so as not to bother the neighbors. The door whisks open and I realize right away I was right. I have walked into an ambush.

“Hey, Charlie,” Demetrius says with a tender smile. He’s young, Black, tall, lean.

There’s an uncomfortable silence until the door flutters shut behind me. I slot my optics back from targeting mode and take a few cautious steps toward him, my stance assertive, my voice low. “What is this?”

“I’m sorry for doing this, but you weren’t answering my calls,” he says. “It’s the only way I knew for sure you’d talk with me. I duped Pollen into making a meet.”

I sigh, loud and long this time. “Duping Pollen is risky for your health.”

Demetrius goes from caring to anxious. “Are you going to tell her?”

I won’t, but I don’t want to tell him that. There are chairs and a sofa, but I make a point of remaining standing. I cross my arms and stare. “It’s over. I made that clear.”

He puts up his hands and tries to approach me. I tell him with my eyes that’s not a promising idea and he halts. “I get it. It’s fine. But you need help. Professional help.”

I sigh once more, but this time it ends with a guttural snarl. I hooked up with Demetrius months ago. I didn’t know it when I met him in the bar, but he is a Trauma Team psychotherapist and social worker. Most TT customers must pay a small fortune in monthly premiums to get sessions with him. I had several “sessions” with him for free, along with an unsolicited diagnosis. I ended things when he decided to turn our fun time into a personal crusade. He got it in his head he wants to save me from myself.

“I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Those are famous last words.”

“I’ve been doing all right so far.”

Demetrius shrugs. “So far, sure, but someday something’s gotta give.”

I glance out the window at the churning humanity beneath me, all the possible clients and targets down on The Street. Biz is the one constant in Night City, a nagging vibration that never leaves your subconscious. I should be hustling. I don’t have time for Demetrius and his psychobabble. I need to keep earning. This is a futile distraction.

“Don’t contact me again.” My eyes lock his and I jab the air with a finger for more emphasis. “I mean it. Next time you waste my time, I’ll drop you myself, I swear.”

“Charlie, listen…”

He goes for a hug, but I shove an open palm into the center of his chest, push him away. I don’t hurt him, but he wasn’t expecting me to be forceful. He winces and backs off. “You think you know me,” I say coolly. “You were just my input. That’s all you were.”

“People aren’t supposed to do the things they made you do.” His voice is plaintive, almost pleading. “They used you. The things you did, the things you told me, not all of it is your fault.” He reaches out to touch my shoulder. “You’re a victim, too.”

That crosses the line. I pivot on my back foot and push forward. My fist hits him beneath the ear. The punch was spontaneous but hard enough to knock Demetrius off his feet. I see the same bewilderment and fear the creep showed me earlier, but not the anger. Demetrius really does believe I’m a victim, and that makes me want to kill him.

“No one ‘makes’ me do anything,” I say. “I’m not a victim. I’m not a victim!”

No response to this, although I’m not really listening anyway. I turn around and leave the same way I came. I consider giving Pollen a call, but I’ll wait, say the meeting went sour, and the job died on the vine. What’s more important is that I get through this moment. I close my eyes and try to visualize a calm, placid landscape, like a waterfall with mellow waters trickling over a cliff into a serene pool, or lush verdant meadows underneath a pristine sunny sky. I try not to think about lemon yellow tracers marking targets in the dead of night, explosive devices erupting beneath light utility vehicles, or automatic gunfire sprayed over huddles of cowering civilians. Every synapse in my brain is begging for the drugs the combat medics would give us to keep us occupied, focused on something other than a collection of agonizing memories torturing our psyches.

I feel the overpowering urge to consume enormous quantities of alcohol.

The Riptide is a popular bar with Militech veterans, nested in one of the more squalid corners of Watson. It also happens to be within staggering distance of my own apartment. The bartender, Seth, is a chunky white dude with a shaved head and shiny metal dentures. He looks like someone stuck a strong-jawed action figure in a garbage disposal. He’s polishing pint glasses when I walk in, motions to my usual stool. “Well, well,” Seth says, tossing his towel casually over his shoulder. “Welcome to the party.”

The bar is cloudy, shadowy, lights kept dim as patrons, heads down, nurse their drinks, none of them mingling, all of them alone together. The sludge of heavy metal and electronic bass pulsates from the ancient sound system. The Riptide is one of the most depressing bars in Night City, which puts it in the running for most depressing bar worldwide. It’s an oasis for disposed soldiers, where we can retreat from the world.

Seth drops a tall glass of draft beer in front of me, the white foam on top sliding down the side onto the scarred wood of the counter. I nod my thanks as I take a sip.

“How’s the new prosthetic?” I ask.

Seth flexes his left arm, a sinewy jumble of wires and rods, capped with a radial claw instead of a hand. “Russian junk,” he answers with resignation. “What can I say? You get what you pay for. Take care of that Militech chrome you got, Blitz. Trust me.”

“Believe me, I do, and I got the receipts from the techs to prove it.”

“By the way, your boyfriend came around the other night, looking for you.” Seth is also one of my neighbors, lives a few doors down. “He seemed like he was worried.”

I grimace. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Your boy toy, then. Whatever.”

I slap my meat hand against the bar. “He’s nothing to me, all right?”

Seth gets indignant on behalf of the drunks I’ve disturbed around me. “Relax, relax. I just thought you’d want to know. I thought you two were a cute couple.”

I gulp down the last quarter of my beer and signal for another. “I’m looking for work, Seth. You heard of anything? Did Hardy finally square his debt with Birzhan?”

“No, word is Hardy lit out for Los Angeles, took his chances on the run.” Seth pours me another drink, puts it before me with a languid clumsiness. “I do know of a job, though. Friend of mine has had trouble with a local bithead, goes by the handle Lorem. They’ve been breaking into my friend’s system, making a real mess of my friend’s Net security. Nothing serious needs to happen. Just a warning, that’s all.”

“Really? You want me to scare a netrunner?” This feels beneath me.

“Just a warning. And find out who they’re working for.”

I take a drink of my beer. “What’s the address?”

**LOREM**

South Night City has the same character it has always had, the sort of character in a dark alley who thrusts a shiv into your gut and fumbles the watch off your wrist as you lay dying. It has all the beauty you would expect from an industrial sprawl but with the bonus of desperate gunslingers and moronic goons fighting for the right to claim an abandoned warehouse as a hide-out or drug lair. Normally I would avoid this place like my life depends on it (because it does), but I don’t have a choice if I want to visit the best ripperdocs available within the city limits. They’re the disciples of the now legendary Savage Doc, who made his name decades ago as one of the best surgeons on The Street when it came to cyberware and tech. Like their mentor, they have links to the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza, which is why they can operate in South Night City safely.

Since I don’t have any Yakuza buddies, I carry a heavy pistol when I walk to the door, but hand it over as soon as the hulking East Asian men who answer it give me the once-over. They pat me down but are half-assed about it; they clearly don’t see me as a real threat, just another bithead out of my safe environment, a lamb visiting a den of wolves. That’s fine with me, since I’m in a hurry, and the sooner my visit ends, the sooner I can get back to work. There’s biz to be done, eddies to be made, and this is a necessary but irritating deviation from my daily schedule. No rest for the wicked.

“Otomo-san,” I say with cheeriness as I walk into his… Clinic? Office? Studio? It’s not much changed from the warehouse it used to be, expansive, lofty ceilings, cold grey metal from top to bottom. The smell of disinfectant only makes it feel more sterile and hostile to life. Ryoichi Otomo is hostile to life, too, a misanthrope to his core. He uses a razor to perfect his high-and-tight crew cut with the same precise strokes he applies when he installs a new operating system, cyberlimbs, or neural implants. Instead of affecting a white coat, he’s dressed in a business casual outfit, dress shirt and slacks. He does, however, roll around on one of those tiny stools on wheels, gliding here and there.

“You are here to pay your debt,” the doc says, his face and tone emotionless.

“Not exactly,” I say, walking over to his operating chair. “Still working on that.”

He chews on this quietly. “Don’t tell me you are here to purchase.”

“Oh, no!” I laugh. “I ran out of credit with you months ago. No, I need a fix.”

He tilts his head at me, his interest piqued. “Chrome you bought here?”

I sit and interlock my fingers. “Not exactly. Bought on the back-alley.”

Otomo covers his face with his palm. “I can’t believe this. Get out of here.”

I recline in the chair. “Taranov T-3 memory boost,” I said. “Techs told me it was more or less generic for the Arasaka NeuroNova, but at half the price.”

“More or less? Less,” Otomo says, “a lot less.”

“Turns out the dealer I bought it from has a no refunds policy. Was hoping that you would be willing to look, see if you can fix it.”

“This is a business, not a charity.”

“Well, I thought you could do me a favor,” I say, “since you owe me one.”

Otomo sits up on his stool. “How’s that?”

I reach into my pocket and pull out a thumb drive. “Was perusing the comms of Arasaka counterintelligence, heard your name mentioned a couple of times. Seems they know about your indiscretion…” In other words, I knew he was banging the wife of a Yakuza enforcer, something not even his Savage Doc pedigree could fully mitigate.

Otomo grimaces. “You’re blackmailing me?”

I shake my head. “Relax, choomba. I’m telling you they’re on to you in exchange for you looking at my implant. That’s all there is between us. We’re cool.”

Otomo considers this, shrugs, rolls closer. “And your debt…”

“Will be collected in the extremely near future. Do you offer payment plans? I heard on The Street that some ripperdocs are offering chrome on layaway…”

Otomo straps me in with poor customer service. He insists anesthesia isn’t required and doesn’t offer any, not even out of courtesy. Since he’s rooting out inside my brain, he could at least offer me a screamsheet to read or something. Finally, he rolls around to face me, his cold eyes drilling into mine. “Defective circuitry. You’re lucky this didn’t fry your cortex. Could have blown it up. Granted, it would’ve been a small mess.”

“Hilarious,” I say. “Is it fixable?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Inherent vice. It’s scrap. Russian junk.”

I rub my chin. “Have any Indian implants? Memory boosters?”

Otomo sighs. “You did me a favor. I did you a favor. Now get out.”’

When they teach you about survival in biology class, they often leave out a keen sense of self-awareness. How do the scavengers and parasites of the natural world co-exist with the apex predators? Yes, they develop all sorts of interesting adaptations to outwit their enemies and disguise themselves, but they also don’t go looking for fights, either. A gazelle doesn’t grow old by teasing lions. When I say I’m small-time, that’s not me being self-deprecating, that’s me being honest, realistic. I’m small-time by design.

The War destroyed the Old Net. You can’t just sit in your pajamas and move around funds in bank accounts like the good old days. Today, computers are linked only through dedicated land lines and laser lines. If you want to obtain a file, shut down a security system, whatever, you need to physically go there and do it. For big jobs, a netrunner can’t go alone; they need a crew to back them up. Hence, I only take small jobs. No crews required; no attachments needed. The closest I can get to freedom.

Of course, living minimalist means living cheaply. My hardware and software are all budget. I have a custom skinsuit designed to absorb impact and support my interface plugs, but if I do my work correctly, no one should ever find me. My primary concerns are programs (especially lethal ones) in the Net architecture. These can, at best, disable my hardware or, at worst, force me to jack out and fry my brains. If I die, I have no one to blame but myself. I prefer it that way. Life is so much better lived uncomplicated.

I take most of my contracts from Danger Girl, a local private investigations and security company. The firm’s heavy hitters focus on the high-society cases while they kick the low-level Net jobs down to me. Just last week I got my hands on the donor list behind a chapter of the fascist Red Chrome Legion, exposed a bunch of rich racists and got paid doing it. The Net security was more porous than a dish sponge. It’s easy money. Danger Girl keeps trying to set me up with bigger jobs, have me run with crews, but I’ve managed to turn them down so far. There’s no shortage of work for me.

After my visit to Otomo I return to my one-bedroom on the north side of Little Europe. I live in the Polish section, and not stopping at the pierogi vendors lined up outside the megabuilding takes every ounce of my self-control. The concierge, Mr. Lewandowski, has a friendly paternal manner, but he keeps using the wrong pronouns for me, even though I’ve explained the fluidity of gender and my self-recognition as non-binary to him at least half a dozen times. My neighbors are mostly high-strung Central Europeans who keep to themselves, which is fine with me. My chosen profession means I’m coming and going at all hours, with the details of my work confidential. As long as I don’t play my Samurai boxed set too loud while I fiddle with tech, no one complains.

I drop my things on the kitchen counter and make for the sofa as I have every day for more days than I can remember when I notice a large muscular Black woman sitting on said sofa, arms folded, looking very annoyed. Her dreadlocks fall on wide shoulders, one arm gunmetal chrome, the other tattooed flesh. One of her eyes is a cyberoptic, red, clearly for targeting. It’s difficult to tell under her cargo pants, but it looks like one of her legs is chrome too. Dollars to donuts she’s a veteran-turned-enforcer. She’s pissed.

I stop dead like a deer in the headlights.

“I bribed your concierge to let me in,” she says. “Just so you know.”

“I’ll have to see about moving,” I say. I make no sudden movements.

“You’ve been after the files of one Winter Rae. Is that correct?”

“Look, I can’t just give up details like that…”

She stands up and I see she is even larger than I thought. I’m slender, svelte even, and this woman looks like she could snap me like a twig. “You’re the runner who goes by Lorem, right? You’ve been trying to break into Winter Rae’s personal data.”

This is indeed true. I was hired a little less than a week ago to retrieve the files but had kept coming up against some particularly nasty ICE. It was during my last attempt that my memory boost implant had given out on me. I thought that had been the end of it. I was not anticipating a goon-for-hire to also work me over in my own apartment.

“OK, OK,” I say. I walk back into the kitchen, where I dropped my stuff.

The woman follows me. “You’re going to leave her alone. Who hired you?”

“It was a contract through Danger Girl,” I say. “I don’t know the client.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I turn toward the cookie jar. My fingers glide along the ceramic lip, then around the grip of the firearm inside. My back is obscuring her vision. I reach inside, pull out the revolver, but instantly her hand is on my wrist and suddenly my arm is pinned behind my back. I groan in pain as my arm twists in a way it was never meant to.

“Stupid,” the woman says, disapprovingly but dismissively, as if she were coaching me more than scolding me. “Now, tell me who it is that hired you.”

“All right, all right! It _was_ a contract through Danger Girl, I swear. The client was Panacea Pharmaceuticals, some med company. She used to work for them, I think.”

The woman chuckles as she eases the pressure but maintains the hold. “You bitheads are always so easy to give things up. I like that. Makes my job a lot easier.”

“So, you’ll leave me alone now?”

She sucks her teeth. “Sorry, kid. In my line of work, you have to do something to remind a person, otherwise they forget. Like, say, a broken nose or a wrist fracture.”

My eyes widen. “Are you crazy? It’s just a job! I said I’ll back off!”

The woman laughs lightly again. “Don’t worry about it, kid. It’s just biz.” Before I can say another word, she spins me around and throws her right fist into my face with all her strength. I hit the ground and reflexively put hands to my face. Blood is flowing from my nose in a torrent. It feels like angry hornets are swarming up my nostrils. I can feel my nose is crooked. “You broke my nose!” I shout, but it sounds funny, well, nasally.

“Just biz,” she says again, stepping over me on her way out the door.

I’m not sure which is more hurt, my face or my pride. As much as I would love to say I leapt into action after my humiliation, to be honest I spent half an hour curled up on the floor, getting my nerves back. It wasn’t the first time someone had broken in to intimidate me, roughed me up some, but this one really stung. I hadn’t been able to get far in Winter Rae’s Net architecture and plant a virus, as the client had instructed. To be fair, the defense programs were far more complex than advertised, but that alone had not been enough to dissuade me. I was going to take another crack at it… but now I had a very good reason to just drop the job entirely, walk away. It wasn’t worth the payoff.

I made a call on my agent. “Hi, Kwame. Bring over some gauze. And tequila.”

Kwame Appiah is one of the most gifted techs I know, a drone mechanic who also knows his way around small electronics. He also happens to be a neighbor and a friend. Any runner will tell you that knowing the code isn’t enough; you need a specialist to help with the technical details. He warned me that the Taranov T-3 memory boost was a poor substitute for the Arasaka NeuroNova, but I ignored him, tried to pinch a few eddies. He pours a shot of aged golden tequila. “You have to spend money to make money.”

I take the shot. “Excuse me for wanting to start a savings account.”

Kwame laughs his infectious laugh. It has a direct line to your inner child. He looks infantile too, with his flat, broad face, large brown eyes, and small mouth, not to mention a big bald head around his big genius brain. “Life is too short, Lorem. You could have died today, still playing in the minor leagues. Is that what you want?”

“No. I want more tequila.”

Kwame pours two shots this time. “You know how The Street is, choomba. It’s about living on the edge. I could have had a quiet, comfortable life in Accra, but I came to Night City precisely because this is where the action is for mercs. I told myself I was going to start over in the City of Dreams, even if it broke my mama’s heart.” He lifts the shot, examines it, downs it. “I wonder, sometimes, about my life if I had stayed.”

The liquor burns as I knock back the second shot. Kwame has told me a little about his past, doing black ops for the Ghanaian government, aerial surveillance, with the occasional targeted assassination of separatist militants here and there. “No, you made the right call coming here. You were unhappy. Me, I’m happy. My schedule for the rest of the week just opened up. I'm drinking tequila with a friend. I think I might have to empty Mr. Lewandowski’s bank account, go on a binge at Short Circuit.”

Kwame laughs that laugh again. “That, I heartily endorse. But I don’t know a lot of happy people with a nose messed up like that. You’re lucky I remember how to make a splint.” Two more pours, two more shots. “You really just going to walk away from this Winter Rae job? All the hours you put in? You have a rep you have to think about, too.”

I shrug. “You just said Danger Girl is desperate to crew me up. It sounds like I can afford to take a hit to my reputation. Folks will learn I’m selective, which I am.” Another shot. “You came here for the freedom, Kwame. Once you join a crew, sign a corporate contract, you start making commitments, you start losing your freedom. Me, I can control if I’m slow or if I’m late, but I can’t control if someone else is slow or late. When I’m in the Net, the only person I have to depend on is myself, and that’s how I like it.”

Kwame tosses back his shot and shakes his head. “Sounds lonely.”

I smile. “I still have friends, such as yourself. We just don’t do business.”

His features grow sly. “Or romance.”

“Well, after this much tequila…”

“Don’t tease me.”

I take his hand, his flesh one. “I’ve known you a long time, choom. I want us to stay friends. Lovers are like jobs: you take them and leave them. It’s better this way.”

Kwame laughs his laugh and pours two shots. It’s going to be a long night.


End file.
